Highway to Profit Paradise with Mobile Web

Today mobile devices are indispensable assistants in business, education and entertainment. The number of mobile devices, from smartphones and tablets to TV sets, are increasing daily.

The most important information is contained in the statistics, i.e. how many viewers visit your website using mobile devices. The easiest way is to use analytics systems to define the percentage of mobile viewers and to detect specific operating systems and gadgets they use for access.

At present only a few mobile operating systems are widely used:

OS

Description

iOS

Today it is a market leader in many countries. This operating system is developed by Apple based on the stationary Mac OS X specially for its touch-screen devices: iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Android

It is one of the youngest and fast growing systems. Open Handset Alliance, which includes several dozen companies and is led by Google, pursues development and support of the operating system.

Windows Phone

It is a new Microsoft system that is gaining momentum. This system is remarkable due to its radically different UI from the above presented systems. It is performed in the style of “fierce reduction”, where the text information is the main element.

BlackBerry

It is a system for corporate and business users from Research In Motion. The system is noteworthy by transmitting some traffic through its encrypted servers that prevents any information leakage.

Everyone decides independently what operating system to choose. There are many factors determining the final choice, but the use of the Internet implies the use of special software – web browsers. Every described platform has the following preinstalled programs:

Curious fact that browsers are used as the engine on all platforms except Windows Phone. It allows developing cross-platform websites on the vast majority of devices with a minimum cost. Microsoft is also not far behind, using a very competitive product with support of new web technologies on this platform.

At this stage of browsers development, they all keep up with high standards for modern web application development – HTML5, CSS3, JS. These standards are expanded in terms of new features that help escaping from a functional based on additional technologies like Flash or Silverlight (the latter do not work on most mobile devices).

Scaling the website to the screen size of devices. It significantly increases the convenience of surfing the site.

Removing decorative graphics with CSS3-technology, which enables «painting» gradients and shadows directly in a web browser. It allows reducing traffic and increases the overall website loading.

A simpler and more informative design. Small screens require much more attention in determining what information should be provided to users. That is why you should show the most demanded information in the first place – for customers to buy your goods at once.

Mobile Web is different from the standard one we are accustomed to. Nowadays mobile versions of websites became the crucial success element in the fast growing world of web technologies.

Leave a comment below telling us what you think of mobile development.

Denis Guryanov is working with e-Commerce for over 7 years, and for over 3 – with Magento. He specializes in front-end development and Magento mobile themes creation. Denis has mastered HTML, CSS, Javascript/jQuery, XML, PHP/MySQL.

He is a developer of 23 of 40 mobile themes on the “Magento-connect” marketplace.
Denis’s hobby is photography and all the related fields: makeup, fashion design and photo-art. He is also interested in the modern art in general (interesting and creative exhibitions, performances and festivals).

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